The Republican-backed federal tax bill flipped the tables on a never-ending question for California politicians: Will high taxes lead the state’s wealthiest residents to flee the Golden State for the comparable tax havens of Florida, Nevada and Texas?

Republicans reliably raise that alarm when Democrats advocate for tax increases, like the 2012 and 2016 ballot initiatives that levied a new income tax on very high-earning residents.

But now, with the federal tax bill cutting off deductions that benefited well-off Californians, the state’s Democrats suddenly are singing the GOP song about a potential millionaire exodus.

“People with higher incomes pay a lot more money, and some of them may be tempted to leave,” Gov. Jerry Brown said.

The lie about the wealthy not paying their share is also exposed:

Democratic state lawmakers are worried because California relies so heavily on the income taxes it collects from high earners to fund government services. The state’s wealthiest 1 percent, for instance, pay 48 percent of its income tax, and the departure of just a few families could lead to a noticeable hit to state general fund revenue.

The US Supreme Court has said it will decide the legality of Donald Trump’s so-called Muslim travel ban – a case that will be an examination of his presidential powers. After appeals to a series of measures announced by the President in the form of executive orders, the court is due to begin hearing arguments about the merits of his ban and the authority for issuing them. While, Mr Trump’s first order initially related to six Muslim-majority countries, challenges to those restrictions and concern that he was hurting people who had helped US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, the ban currently involves Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Chad and North Korea, and some people from Venezuela.

When TCC Adjunct Professor Daniel Mashburn walked into his Astronomy class Tuesday night, several students were alarmed by his behavior. Some thought it was a joke while others called police.

Student April McLeod says her teacher got to class about 20 minutes late and turned off the lights and was wearing a ball cap, a toboggan, a scarf over his face and gloves. She says Mashburn never took any of it off even when police questioned him after responding to calls from students.

Paramedics were called to the Washington home of Justice Sonia Sotomayor Friday morning, but a Supreme Court spokeswoman said the justice was not hospitalized and went to work Friday after being treated for low blood sugar.

“She experienced symptoms of low blood sugar at her home this morning. She was treated by emergency medical services and is doing fine,” court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg told POLITICO. “She’s at work and following her usual schedule and will be participating in all planned activities over the weekend.”

The episode caused concern to some neighbors of the 63-year-old justice, who lives in an apartment near Washington’s Shaw and Columbia Heights neighborhoods.

Sotomayor was diagnosed as a child with Type 1 diabetes, which she now controls through a combination of synthetic insulin injections, glucose tablets and regular checks of her blood sugar.

At a recent gathering of local Democrats in Royce’s district, activist Shana Charles said the possibility that two Republicans will advance in the primary is “certainly on the radar of many activists in Orange County.”

California’s top-two primary benefitted the Democratic Party in 2016, when two Democrats advanced in the U.S. Senate race. And it is possible two Democrats will face each other in the gubernatorial runoff this year, depriving Republicans of a stop on the top of the ticket.

But in some cases, Charles said, “it backfires.” The current election cycle, she said, has “made me rethink this top-two ballot.”

There’s a ghost haunting Elizabeth Warren as she ramps up for a possible 2020 presidential bid and a reelection campaign in Massachusetts this year: her enduring and undocumented claims of Native American ancestry.

By Annie Linskey GLOBE STAFF JANUARY 19, 2018
WASHINGTON — There’s a ghost haunting Elizabeth Warren as she ramps up for a possible 2020 presidential bid and a reelection campaign in Massachusetts this year: her enduring and undocumented claims of Native American ancestry.

Warren says now, as she has from the first days of her public life, that she based her assertions on family lore, on her reasonable trust in what she was told about her ancestry as a child.

“I know who I am,” she said in a recent interview with the Globe.

We know too, Lizzie – you’re a liar, that’s who.

there’s also discomfort on the left and among some tribal leaders and activists that Warren has a political blind spot when it comes to the murkiness surrounding her story of her heritage, which blew up as an issue in her victorious 2012 Massachusetts Senate race. In recent months, Daily Show host Trevor Noah mocked her for claiming Native American ancestry and the liberal website ThinkProgress published a scathing criticism of her by a Cherokee activist who said she should apologize.

As Warren is mentioned as a serious presidential contender in 2020, even some who should be her natural allies say Warren has displayed a stubborn unwillingness to address the gap between the story she was told of Native Americans in the family tree and a dearth of hard evidence to back it up.

She has no evidence to back it up because it’s not true. She lied. It’s that simple.

It’s a disconnect that has lingered unresolved in the public sphere for more than five years.

Warren says she grew up understanding that forebears in her mother’s family had Cherokee and Delaware blood. But examinations by genealogists of documents including birth, marriage, and death records have shown no conclusive proof of Native American ancestry.

A genetic test would clear this up quickly – which is exactly why she won’t take one!

If Warren seeks to tackle the issue, there are no easy options. Some tribe members want her to apologize to Native Americans for claiming heritage without solid evidence. Tribes across America have spent centuries denouncing whites who claim Indian DNA without a clear basis, claims they find deeply offensive.

Another path includes pursuing stronger outreach to the tribes with whom she claims to share kinship, a strategy that she’s begun to employ. This too is fraught, as some Native American leaders are resentful that she’s done, in their estimation, little to help tribes as a powerful senator.

“She’s not part of the Cherokee community,” said Chad Smith, who was the principal chief of the Oklahoma-based Cherokee Nation from 1999 to 2011. “She hasn’t reached out. She hasn’t come here and participated much.”

Instagram video of an alleged pot party at Kodak Black’s home led to the performer’s return to jail Thursday, the Broward Sheriff’s Office said.

A guest at the Pembroke Pines party held a handgun while an infant was present, authorities say. And Black, 20, whose real name is Dieuson Octave, did not take the baby away from the group on Saturday when the video was made, according to the sheriff’s office.

Deputies say one of four guests had a marijuana joint in his mouth and was “inches from the infant’s face,” while a second man was rolling a joint and a third was playing with a Sig Sauer handgun “in a reckless manner,” according to an arrest report describing the video, which appeared on social media.

Authorities declined to describe Black’s relationship to the child. The sheriff’s office declined to release the video, saying it was evidence.

In WATERGATE, bunglers physically broke into a campaign headquarters to try to get dirt on the candidate and his team. There is a valid question whether the candidate was involved in the original planning of the break in or not, whether he even knew about it or not.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and the DNC conspired to collude, through Fusion GPS, with people connected to the Russian government to create a fake dossier on candidate Trump and to use that fake dossier to collude with the FBI and other intelligence agencies to obtain a false FISA warrant which was used to electronically “break into” Trump’s team and offices, an abuse of government power that should shock any sane American of any party, whether they like or hate Trump.

If this does not result in criminal prosecution of those involved it will be a terrible mistake and yet another signal to Democrats they can abuse government power any way they want and get away with it.

All hell is breaking loose in Washington D.C. after a four-page memo detailing extensive FISA court abuse was made available to the entire House of Representatives Thursday. The contents of the memo are so explosive, says Journalist Sara Carter, that it could lead to the removal of senior officials in the FBI and the Department of Justice and the end of Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation.

These sources say the report is “explosive,” stating they would not be surprised if it leads to the end of Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel investigation into President Trump and his associates. -Sara Carter

A source close to the matter tells Fox News that “the memo details the Intelligence Committee’s oversight work for the FBI and Justice, including the controversy over unmasking and FISA surveillance.” An educated guess by anyone who’s been paying attention for the last year leads to the obvious conclusion that the report reveals extensive abuse of power and highly illegal collusion between the Obama administration, the FBI, the DOJ and the Clinton Campaign against Donald Trump and his team during and after the 2016 presidential election.

Lawmakers who have seen the memo are calling for its immediate release, while the phrases “explosive,” “shocking,” “troubling,” and “alarming” have all been used in all sincerity. One congressman even likened the report’s details to KGB activity in Russia. “It is so alarming the American people have to see this,” Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan told Fox News. “It’s troubling. It is shocking,” North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows said. “Part of me wishes that I didn’t read it because I don’t want to believe that those kinds of things could be happening in this country that I call home and love so much.”

Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., offered the motion on Thursday to make the Republican majority-authored report available to the members.

“The document shows a troubling course of conduct and we need to make the document available, so the public can see it,” said a senior government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the document. “Once the public sees it, we can hold the people involved accountable in a number of ways.”

The government official said that after reading the document “some of these people should no longer be in the government.” -Sara Carter

“I believe the consequence of its release will be major changes in people currently working at the FBI and the Department of Justice,” he said, referencing DOJ officials Rod Rosenstein and Bruce Ohr.

Former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino says “Take it to the bank, the FBI/FISA docs are devastating for the Dems.”

The dossier was used in part as evidence for a warrant to surveil members of the Trump campaign, according to a story published this month. Former British spy Christopher Steele, who compiled the dossier in 2016, was hired by embattled research firm Fusion GPS. The firm’s founder is Glenn Simpson, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who has already testified before Congress in relation to the dossier. In October, The Washington Post revealed for the first time that it was the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC that financed Fusion GPS.

Congressional members are hopeful that the classified information will be declassified and released to the public.

“We probably will get this stuff released by the end of the month,” stated a congressional member, who asked not to be named. -Sara Carter

Releasing the memo to the public would require a committee vote, a source told Fox, adding that if approved, it could be released as long as there are no objections from the White House within five days.

A state district judge in Comal County said God told him to intervene in jury deliberations to sway jurors to return a not guilty verdict in the trial of a Buda woman accused of trafficking a teen girl for sex.

Judge Jack Robison apologized to jurors for the interruption, but defended his actions by telling them “when God tells me I gotta do something, I gotta do it,” according to the Herald-Zeitung in New Braunfels.

The jury went against the judge’s wishes, finding Gloria Romero-Perez guilty of continuous trafficking of a person and later sentenced her to 25 years in prison. They found her not guilty of a separate charge of sale or purchase of a child.

When people in central Oregon’s Madras, Culver and Metolius turn on their taps, untreated spring water flows forth. It costs them less than a penny per gallon.

A company in California buys that same water and sells it in big glass jugs for up to $8.60 a gallon around Los Angeles and San Francisco.

The jugs are flying off the shelves.

“The water’s been doing really well,” said Edwin Diaz, manager of Erewhon Market in Calabasas, a small city northwest of Malibu. “It’s kind of a specialty item.”

Fans are quenching their thirst for “raw water” – water with no chemicals or other treatment that passes federal regulations because it’s clean at the source.

“It’s a no-brainer,” said Lee Sayer, a musician in San Francisco and anti-fluoride activist who has been drinking raw water for months. “You have water that’s processed through the earth through natural processes – it’s cleaned. And being that water has memory, it has a memory of tumbling through the rocks. It has micronutrients and I believe it’s alive.”

But don’t look for raw water in Oregon stores.

Only a few companies are selling untreated bottled water in the United States and their sales are small. The supplier that uses the central Oregon spring water touts its natural probiotics to promote a healthy digestive system, but doesn’t yet offer it here.

And if you like the idea of “raw water”, you should try “miracle spring water”:

Miracle spring water, which is sent by mail in a small plastic envelope, is purported to attract wealth and eliminate debt, according to Peter Popoff, a German-American televangelist and self-proclaimed faith healer. The miracle spring water is delivered along with a form letter that includes a request for money.

Peter Popoff’s Miracle Water is comprised of water obtained from a spring near Chernobyl, where there was a nuclear disaster in 1986, claims the minister. Those who drank from this spring were reportedly protected from the nuclear radiation effects.

FULL ANSWER
The minister states that this water reduces debts or provides healing benefits for those who imbibe the water. To receive the water, one must fill out a prayer request form on Peter Popoff’s official ministry page or call the toll free number. The requester receives both a packet of the Miracle Spring Water accompanied by the miracle tool, which is a cross made of wood.

In addition, there are strict instructions for achieving the best results with the water by following explicit instructions from God, states Peter Popoff. The user must sleep with the water for one night, drink it immediately upon waking, and return the empty packet to the minister with a financial donation to the ministry. After which, the user should ultimately receive some good fortune. If not, the ministry follow-ups with the individual and sends more offers of prosperity charms, such as Dead Sea salt or a blessing bracelet, which can alternatively be used to produce good financial or health outcomes.

Popoff’s water sales are thought to be controversial in nature, and his ministry Popoff’s People United for Christ received and F rating from the Better Business Bureau, according to Christian Post Church and Ministry.

The lawmakers and Trump’s White House mounted last-ditch negotiations to stave off what had come to appear as the inevitable, with the parties in stare-down mode over federal spending and proposals to protect some 700,000 younger immigrants from deportation.

Every single story I’ve seen on this in the past quoted the figure at 800,000.

In any case, it looks like the Democrats are shutting down the government yet again – and blaming Republicans, again.

The only question is whether the electorate will be STUPID ENOUGH to believe them , again.

My suggestion – have Republicans agree to include comprehensive immigration reform to include protection (not amnesty or citizenship, but a limited protection from deportation only) for “dreamers” along with an end to chain migration, an end to the visa lottery system, an end to anchor babies, an end to accepting “refugees”, strict and absolute limits on how many immgrants get to come here every year at levels we had back in the 1950s or so, requirements that those who come have a marketable skill and also rudimentary ability to read, write and speak English as a minimum and… what else? Any suggestions?

New York-London passenger flight goes ‘SUPERSONIC’ in record-breaking trip
A PASSENGER plane has set a new world record for the fastest ever transatlantic flight after going “supersonic”.

Repeated twice, but the plane did not go “supersonic”. Also note the typo:

The Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner was able to hurtle 284 passengers across the Atlantic on Monday afternoon thanks to a wild 202mph jet stream.

After departing JFK airport at 11.44am and reaching cruising speed, the wind tunnel-like belt of air stretching west-east pushed the plane even faster.

But despite topping the 776mph speed of sound — a luxury the Concorde was most famous for — it technically didn’t go supersonic.

Because the train was already travelling in a fast moving body of air, the velocity needed to break the sound barrier increased.

Fake in several ways. The relative velocity (relative to the air the plane was moving through) needed to break the sound barrier did not change – the air speed needed remained constant. In terms of ground speed yes, a higher ground speed was required, but that is only one aspect of velocity – and you don’t use ground speed to determine mach number.

A man traveling from Iceland to England was arrested at the Iceland Keflavík International Airport for attempting to avoid an excess luggage fee by wearing eight pairs of pants and ten shirts.

Ryan Carney Williams, who goes by Ryan Hawaii, was reportedly denied a boarding pass at the British Airways desk for his flight home after he put on all his clothes that wouldn’t fit properly in his checked luggage.

Denied boarding is fine… but arrest?

He was not “arrested for attempting to avoid an excess luggage fee”, he was arrested for other behavior like refusing to leave after being denied boarding.

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